A War Like No Other

How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War

By: Victor Davis Hanson

Narrated by: Bob Souer

Victor Davis Hanson has given us painstakingly researched and pathbreaking accounts of wars ranging from classical antiquity to the 21st century. Now he juxtaposes an ancient conflict with our most urgent modern concerns to create his most engrossing work to date, A War Like No Other.

Hanson compellingly portrays the ways Athens and Sparta fought on land and sea, in city and countryside, and details their employment of the full scope of conventional and non-conventional tactics, from sieges to targeted assassinations, torture, and terrorism. He also assesses the crucial roles played by warriors such as Pericles and Lysander, artists, among them Aristophanes, and thinkers including Sophocles and Plato.

Hanson's perceptive analysis of events and personalities raises many thought-provoking questions: Were Athens and Sparta like America and Russia, two superpowers battling to the death? Is the Peloponnesian War echoed in the endless, frustrating conflicts of Vietnam, Northern Ireland, and the current Middle East? Or was it more like America's own Civil War, a brutal rift that rent the fabric of a glorious society, or even this century's schism between liberals and conservatives? Hanson daringly brings the facts to life and unearths the often surprising ways in which the past informs the present.

©2005 Victor Davis Hanson (P)2019 Tantor

Best analysis of the Peloponnesian War I’ve read

VDH has a way of making history accessible that’s unparalleled among contemporary historians. Next best thing to reading Thucydides.

Needs maps.

When are they going to provide maps? Seems so simple. It would help a whole lot.

Outstanding!

I own both the book and audio book. A book like no other about a war like no other.

History repeats itself.

The only difference is that now the generals stay safely in the rear. The rest of the soldiers are cannon fodder at the front.

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This book gives the reader a great awareness of the warfare of the time. As you read on you get an image of the fighting that would take place in the battles through descriptive text that pulls from all the great primary sources on the subject and summarizes them with clarity and an accurate perspective.

I was pleasantly suprised.